Caught between a rock and a hard place. It’s an old saying, referring to a situation where neither option is amicable. It has a peculiarity to it: it is not usually uttered by hard things. They are the perimeters, what needs to be navigated and weighted. And caught between them, there is always something soft. This rule of layering goes beyond mere sayings. One need only look at nature to see that it is so. Between the eggshells there is the yolk, and between the bones there is the ligaments. It could be argued that it’s a matter of definition: that which lacks the strength to break free from its boundaries must necessarily be soft. But that alone doesn’t account for this degree of symmetry. The soft things need the hard things in order to remain soft. And the hard things need the softness in between them, else their hardness eats away at them, until all that remains is brittle powder, spreading in the wind. Of course, all things are relative, and what is relatively weak must not necessarily be objectively so.

Tor was objectively weak. And he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. It sure sucked to be him, but that was the hand he had been dealt. Born from unknown no-bodies and deemed physically and mentally inferior. Hell, some even called him ugly. The one good thing he had, was that he was kind. Not that it was worth squat in this corner of the world. Here it was more akin to an insult, a weakness that was bordering on debilitating. It was something that needed to be stomped out before it got you killed. He knew this, he just didn’t have the heart to do it.

He lifted his downcast gaze and looked into the eyes of the man in front of him. They were hard eyes, filled with pride and anger. It was the look of a man who had measured himself against the ideals of society and been assured that he was in no way lacking. A man in every way fundamentally different from him, and all it took was an unfriendly, one-handed push from the man to make this difference glaringly obvious and confirmed. He hit the ground with a thud and was thankful that there were no rocks behind him.

“Know your place, kid”, the man snarled. His name was Josef, and he was the glowing star of this disgusting collection of killers and robbers. They called themselves the Wolves, but they were no wolves. At best they were rats, scurrying around the produce of their betters, taking what was never theirs. Josef was tall and strong, straight-backed and unbothered by the pain he caused others. A perfect match that had arrived out of no-were, fighting his way up to the position of bandleader in less than a month. Tor had joined the group just slightly after but hadn’t made the same kind of impact. Not that he wanted to. He wanted nothing to do with them and would ditch them in a minute if the opportunity ever presented itself.

“If you ever fuck with me again, I’ll kill you on the spot”. It wasn’t a threat, the man was stating a guaranteed outcome, and Tor heard himself swallow. He nodded weakly, uncertain of his voice.

Tor hadn’t fucked with him, he didn’t swing that way. He had saved the life of a small family. Or at least saved them from a life of suffering and evil. He would have liked to think that it was something he had done intentionally, but the truth wasn’t that pretty. He had considered helping them, but in the last moment he had chickened out, too afraid of the repercussions to go through with it. As he had squirmed about in his ambivalence, fate had intertwined, a snapped twig pulling off what he had been too weak to finish. The sound had startled them, made them bolt away from the sound like deer, forcing the band to choose between a drawn-out chase or letting them go. Josef hadn’t been nearby, and the bandmembers on site had decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle. Josef hadn’t agreed, and the member who had made the decision had been blooded for it.

The worst part was that Josef really wasn’t wrong. Their sole purpose for being here was to spread the influence of the tribe. To catch anyone they could, take their belongings and give them the same choice that every member of the tribe had been forced to make: Join, submit or die. The last choice wasn’t really an option, it really only meant submit and be beaten near death. Those who submitted would either serve the tribe at the extreme bottom of the pecking order or be sold off to some other group as a slave. There wasn’t much of a difference between the two outcomes.

Tor had chosen to join. In hindsight he regretted his decision, but it was the only way he could keep an eye out for his little brother. He was a rash kid despite his young age and had immediately voiced his desire to join with pride in his voice. It had saddened Tor, but he couldn’t really fault him for his choice. In this fucked-up world, power was everything and Tor was the odd one for not wanting it. What made it worse was that it had been all for naught, he hadn’t seen his brother since. He had been bunched up in a different crew that had left right after. Tor didn’t want to think about what his brother might have seen or been made to do since.

He was still on the ground from the shove. Josef must have left, because he was nowhere in sight. He got up and dared his way over to the communal fire were dinner was served. The meagre scrapings of roasted boar that he got wasn’t were filling, but it was all that he would get. Like always, the strong were rewarded and the weak were spat at. Josef wouldn’t be sleeping with an empty belly.

The following day the band broke camp and moved on. They were on the outskirts of their territory, slowly increasing their influence by making the area unliveable for anything not unified enough to put up solid resistance. To the south was the domain of the Dwellers, the weird crowd who navigated the ancient ruins that littered the area, made strong and unpredictable from the secrets of a far-gone civilization. The tribe made sure to never bother them, at least for now. There was no reason to antagonize them when there so many easier targets about.

There was no shortage of small villages here, hidden in pockets of forests or nestled up in the false security of a mountain. Most barely had guards, maybe a hunter or two who could step up in a pinch. A few had some trained warriors, but they stood a small chance against the tribe, where every proper member was a killer. They lived for violence, and the few warriors they faced were unbloodied in comparison. Tor’s village hadn’t fared fell when the tribe came knocking.

A day went by with the band uneventfully moving about, searching for easy pickings. Tor new that peaceful lull was over when Josef gathered the band for a meeting in the afternoon. Tor felt the same cold dread that it always made him feel. It meant that the band had found new pray. It turned out to be another village, a few houses in a glade that was too occupied with surviving to put up much of a resistance. When the meeting was done, Tor did his best to get out of anyone’s field of view. It was his best way of staying out of trouble. This time he wasn’t fast enough. Josef caught him in his gaze and called him over.

“There is no weaselling out this time”, he said with a look full of contempt. “You are going to do your part, and I’m going to enjoy seeing you doing it”

Tor said nothing, shaken by the unexpected development.

“When we strike tonight, you are going to be there at the very front, standing right by me”

Tor’s silence continued. It brought a scowl to the face of the man.

“Am I understood?” He growled.

Tor nodded weakly in response, his mouth dry and hands cold. It got him a heave-handed slap to the face. It hurt, but at least he hadn’t fallen over like the last time. Josef stepped in close to him, pressing his forehead against him. Tor would have stepped back, but the man had a firm grasp on his shirt, holding him in place.

“I want a fucking verbal confirmation, twerp.” He said in a low, threatening voice.

Tor gathered himself and managed to stammer out a “yes”, not sure of what he wanted to hear. It was hard to tell if Josef was happy with it or not, but he was once again pushed to the ground, and he remained there as Josef spun around and walked off with long, confident steps.

Tor was reeling in his mind. He had to think of something, some way out of this mess. Otherwise, tonight would be the night where he became one of the ones he hated. Running off was no good, he still had his brother to look out for, and he was sure he wouldn’t get very far anyway. Partly because he knew just how good the band was at tracking people down. But also because the wilderness was a dangerous place. He had practically zero chance at survival on his own, in no time he would either be out of food or be somebody else’s food. He wasn’t sure which of the two would be worst.

What options did that leave him? He searched his mind for answers, but all that came up was tipping the village off, giving them a chance at flight. In other words, the exact same thing that had put him on Josef’s shitlist to begin with. Tor didn’t like it, but what choice did he have? When faced with the option of kill or be killed, you couldn’t call yourself good unless you tried for a third way.

Whit his mind made up, he began thinking of a way to pull it off. He was short on time. The trip to the village was an hour or so, and if this would have any point to it, the villagers would need all the time they could get. It was still only about lunchtime, which meant that they had little more than half a day until the rest of the band set out.

He grabbed what little equipment he had, a bow and a long dagger, and made his way to the edge of camp as inconspicuously as he could. The camp’s perimeter was always guarded, both to keep people from running off and as defence from potential attacks. The former was probably way more common. He casually walked around one of the outer tents as if he was going to take a piss. It was a plausible excuse in case this went sour. He stood by the tent for a little while, checking his surroundings with wide head movements. He figured that the best way to stay undetected was to not look like you were hiding something. His scanning showed that he was in luck, no-one seemed to have taken note of him. He held his breath and dove into the thick vegetation that surrounded the camp, his heart beating madly.

He stayed there for half a second, ears tensed, searching for any sound that might show that he had been spotted. He heard nothing out of the ordinary, so he slowly made his way forward. The guards would usually be arranged in a ring around camp, thirty meters or so into the forest. He knew this because escape had been the first thing on his mind when he had first ended up in the band, and he had painstakingly scraped out any information that might help him get away.

Tor’s crawl through the forest slowly brought him closer to where the guards ought to be, and he soon saw the back of a guard. They shouldn’t be grouped up too closely, so this one ought to be the only one that he had to worry about. The sole remaining hurdle now was figuring out how he would get past him. Killing the man was out. Partly because that was what he was trying to avoid in the first place, but mostly because he didn’t stand a chance in a fight.

He and his brother had been raised by couple of farmers who had stumbled upon them next to their dead parents, whom he had been too young to have any memory off. He had lived his life as a farmhand, and the meagre skill he had with the bow slung across his back was just enough to occasionally bring down some small game, but only if they were unaware and luck was on his side. The guard in front of him on the other hand, had probably survived countless fights. The band only put their more experienced members on guard duty, and that was only partly because the rest had a tendency to bolt at first chance. When the main thing you dealt in was killing, enemies had a tendency to pile up. As Josef was prone to say, a solid line of sentries is usually the difference between them piling up on your doorstep, or you piling them up in a ditch.

He really had no clue as to how he should get past the guard. He considered distracting him by throwing something as a diversion, but he couldn’t believe that it would be very effective. At best it might cause the guard to look away for a second, but that wouldn’t be enough. He would need some solid five minutes of the guard not being there, otherwise he wouldn’t have enough time to leave the guard’s field of view. He sat there, desperately scraping his brain for a solution while the preciously little time he had steadily decreased.

His legs had long gone numb from his awkward position when fate intervened and handed him a solution. It was a series of low birdcalls that made the guard’s head snap in attention. The guard in front of him answered with a similar call, and then began looking around nervously. Another call was heard, which made the guard carefully walk away from his post, seemingly towards the next guard in the ring around camp.

Tor couldn’t make much sense of what was happening, but he wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. As soon as he judged that the other guard was out of earshot, he sat out into the forest, crawling as fast as he dared. As he left camp behind him, he could have sworn he heard the rhythmic grunting of two voices carrying through the forest.